THE International Chamber of Commerce has put forward a set of business recommendations
to help leaders of the world's major economies prepare for discussions on the
world’s most pressing economic policy challenges at next month's G20 Summit taking
place Hangzhou, China.

From climate change and energy to taxation and trade, the recommendations cover
seven areas not covered by the 20 principle 2016 policy recommendations developed
by the Business -20 (B20), and to which ICC significantly contributed and fully
endorses.
"The supplemental ICC recommendations aim to complement B20 work and help
drive progress on some of the most intractable economic and social challenges
confronting the global economy," said Jeffrey Hardy, Director of ICC's CEO
G20 Advisory Group.
"As the world business organization, we want to flag some salient areas
where G20 leaders can make progress towards sustained and inclusive economic
growth."
Here, we bring you a summary of the full recommendations which have been presented
to the senior government officials - known as sherpas - tasked with laying the
groundwork for the Summit.
Taxation
• Achieve coordinated and consistent implementation of the G20/OECD BEPS Action
Plan, ensuring that all countries - not just OECD states - work together towards
a consistent international tax landscape.
• Continue efforts to align investment and tax policies to facilitate greater
consistency internationally and incentivize cross-border trade, investment, jobs
and economic growth.
• Ensure effective dispute resolution mechanisms are in place to mitigate double
taxation cases and associated tax disputes.
• Maintain the confidentiality of commercially-sensitive business information
in CbC tax reports and ensure that all countries and jurisdictions implement
the global standards, including new tax transparency measures related to the
automatic exchange of financial account information between national tax offices.
Trade finance
• Ensure equitable, risk-aligned and consistent regulatory treatment of trade
finance to enable the engagement of developing and frontier economies.
• Advance and multiply the positive impact of trade financing and trade, by actively
enabling the deployment of FinTech solutions and propositions in international
commerce.
Trade
• Call on WTO members to continue to refrain from taxing electronic commerce,
and create conditions for the further development of the global digital economy.
• Initiate sectoral negotiations at WTO that can make a significant contribution
to economic growth by reducing the cost of trading.
• Make concrete progress on the liberalization of trade in services through alternative
negotiating approaches, including plurilateral approaches such as the Trade in
Services Agreement (TiSA), with the ultimate aim of transferring results into
the WTO. It is estimated that removing barriers to global exports of tradable
services could generate world trade gains of US$1.0 trillion and global employment
gains of almost 9 million jobs.
• Encourage more countries to join the recently announced plurilateral initiative
to eliminate tariffs on environmental goods, expand product coverage using the
widest possible definition of green goods and eliminate unilaterally-imposed
environmental rules that are trade-restrictive or create barriers to trade. A
meaningful WTO agreement in liberalizing trade on environmental goods, even on
a plurilateral basis, could deliver US$10.3 billion of additional exports and
augment employment gains by 256,000 jobs.
Investment
• Include dispute resolution mechanisms in all investment agreements to ensure
investors have direct access to effective and independent dispute settlement.
• Avoid sectoral discriminations in the negotiation of investment treaties, which
have a direct impact on the inflow of FDI.
• Devote greater attention to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which can enjoy
a range of preferential benefits and compete with the private sector in investment
and trade areas.
• Refrain from abusing "national security" provisions in agreements
and treaties for protectionist purposes. Such procedures should be applied in
a transparent, fair and non-discriminatory manner if they are to be exceptionally
used.
• Avoid forced localization provisions which have negative repercussions on both
the investor and on the host country's attractiveness as an investment